Benefits of Combined Physical and Logical Access Control

...are using HID Global credentials for physical access control and companies are now seeing the benefit of combining physical and logical access onto a single platform. These converged solutions cut costs, improve security and open many significant new market opportunities for dealers, installers and integrators. In fact, convergence projects introduce an entirely new set of decision-makers beyond the physical access integrators, including enterprise CIOs, CTOs and CISOs that are looking at the overall benefit to enterprise.

For example, many large enterprises will not authorize new access control expenditures unless they can build on the existing physical access control infrastructure and applications. Still others, including many small- to medium-sized companies in India, can't even afford strong logical access unless it is easy to add to their physical access systems and credentials. In these and many other cases, converged physical and logical access control solutions gives dealers, integrators and installers opportunities to deliver value to this new set of C-level customers.

To forge new relationships with these stakeholders in India, this year HID Global participated in some of the major events in the region that are tailored to this audience, including the India Computer Security Conference and the Banking Finance and Technology Forum. Given HID's large installed base of physical access control cards in many of the companies represented at the shows, a good number of the CIOs, CTO, and CISO I spoke with at the events immediately understood the value and long term return on investment offered by a combined HID Global IT security and physical access control solution.

And looking ahead, convergence isn't restricted to traditional cards and readers. Integrated solutions can now move onto mobile devices including NFC-enabled phones that use next-generation technology such HID's iCLASS SE access control platform. iCLASS SE is based on a technology-independent, standards-based model that enables an ecosystem of mobile access control solutions that are more secure, flexible and easy to extend with new, converged capabilities.

As we continue to engage more IT systems integrators and enterprise decision makers in India, the opportunities for convergence is growing by the day. I think 2012 will bring a new wave of possibilities and expansion for us in the region with the mounting interest not only in converged solutions, but also in other new HID Global products, solutions, services and technologies to come.